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Neo-Liberalism in America: Big Businesses Taking Over

October 18th, 2010 admin

While by no means is America a Neo-liberalist country, I still feel like some of the main points of Neo-liberalism are things America strives for. Privatization in the United States is something that we are known for. The chance to be able to start your own business was one of the selling points of America, but larger corporations are making this possibility harder and harder to achieve in the more modern world. Years ago, people who were passionate about something could use that passion to create a life. Someone who loved shoes could start a shoe store and someone who wanted to fix cars could open their own shop. Present day some of these passions cannot be achieved due to the fact that the market is already somewhat a monopoly. Businesses like Nike and Adidas have made it almost impossible for someone who has a passion for shoes to start their own business. Instead, a person with this passion would end up working for a company such as Nike or Adidas because they control the market. In doing so, the control of these large companies is only reinforced; the company grows, they gain another employee with a passion for shoes, and avoid a potential competition.

These big corporations make the possibility of being self-sufficient almost impossible. These companies outsource their labor to people that they can pay even less. This distorts the jobs in American and makes us susceptible to the world economy. Keeping the jobs in America is the first step we need to take if we ever plan on being self-sufficient. If we could achieve self-sufficiency, we would not be affected by some of the world’s problems. Things would be cheaper if everything was made in the US, the unemployment rate would probably decrease, and our reliance on outside countries would be cut off.

Is this idea of self-sufficiency even a possibility? The online world has more or less removed this as an option. Websites are delivering to anywhere in the world. They can keep prices down, offer an almost limitless selection and give customers freedom to find the best deal. In a self-sufficient society, people would have to accept fewer options. Today we can buy Japanese cars, German cars, and American cars (just to name a few.) We can pretty much buy any food from anywhere world at our local supermarket, so why would we want to stop doing this? A drastic change in our lifestyles allowing us to be self-sufficient would hurt the large businesses and add competition in the United States.